Spring 2025

Question Pools and Randomization for Exams

Formal assessments administered in an online setting with a value of at least 20% of the total course grade must feature for randomized questions. Building “question pools” in Blackboard is an effective strategy for creating assessments in alignment with this policy, since it allows you to deploy exams with randomized blocks of questions selected from your question pools.

You might think of a question pool as a test bank. To build a question pool, complete the following steps:

1. Build a Question Pool

In the Course Management area of the course menu in your Blackboard course, click the Course Tools section to expand it.
Select Tests, Surveys, and Pools.
Select  Pools.
Select  Build Pool.
Complete the  Pool Information page and select  Submit.

To add questions, you can use choose Create Questions to write new ones, Find Questions to reuse questions from a previous test or another pool, or Upload Questions to create the pool from a list of questions in Excel.

Note: When you select Find Questions, you can choose from existing tests in your course or any tests you’ve imported from other courses.

2. Create Randomized Blocks

When you create a test, you can use random blocks to be sure each student receives a different version of the test. Random blocks draw questions from pools only.

In the Course Management area of the course menu in your Blackboard course, click the Course Tools section to expand it.
Select Tests, Surveys, and Pools.
Select  Tests.
Select  Build Test.
Name the test and click Submit.
On the Test Canvas page, hover your mouse over Reuse Question and click Create Random Block.

On the Create Random Block page, select at least one pool from which you want to draw questions and select a question type. Note that All Pool Questions is an available option. Select that option if you wish to have the randomized exam pull from the entire pool of questions.

Click Submit.
On the Test Canvas Page, enter the number of questions to be displayed and the point value per question.
Click OK at the bottom.
You can now deploy the test in your course site as you normally would.

For more Blackboard tips and support, visit the EP Support website or contact the EP Help Desk.

Keywords: Tech Tips